Im in the same boat as you. Insanity. There is a way to disable smart features (and internet/ads) after a factory reset if you dont need any apps like youtube, etc.

That giant handheld Nitro 11 looks atrocious. Happy to see handhelds entering the market after the steam deck, but this ain’t it.

Own your Computer

Funny, I have the opposite opinion. Gnome is great on laptops, especially 2in1s. KDE Plasma is a great desktop PC environment.

I’ve enjoyed using the Simple Alarm Clock on F-droid, importantly for me, it requires you to hold down the shut off button for a couple seconds which helps prevent me from accidentally shutting off my alarm instead of snoozing it. Only downside for this app and possibly others is that they may not function if your device OS updates in the middle of the night.

Emulation Station Desktop Edition (ES-DE) is probably a good alternative gaming frontend similar to Playnite

I’ve decided due to running into issues as well, that my system being built on x11 for a few years means I probably wont switch to wayland until I do a fresh install to avoid any potential issues around old x11 packages i’m running